Here’s how to avoid similarly embarrassing and potentially costly mistakes, based on our experience examining the diversity-management success and failures of companies applying to The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list over the past 13 years.

Our diversity web seminar on resource groups, featuring Procter & Gamble, No. 5 in the DiversityInc Top 50, and American Express, No. 14, showed exactly how valuable their resource groups were to examining marketplace ideas, including ad campaigns. American Express, which has 16 groups, used its Latino and Asian groups to develop holiday cards that were culturally competent and brought in significant revenue.

Membership in resource groups of DiversityInc Top 50 Companies has increased dramatically in recent years because these groups are proving their value to the business goals.

Organizations with clearly stated values, including diversity & inclusion, are less likely to have ambiguous decisions made on any level. Popchips’ website does not include any statement about values and/or diversity. By contrast, all of the DiversityInc Top 50 companies have mission statements mentioning values and diversity on their corporate websites.

A good example of a company that espouses and lives up to its values is jcpenney (No. 35 in the DiversityInc Top 50). The retailer, and CEO Ron Johnson, stood firmly behind its decision to have Ellen DeGeneres as its spokesperson, even after a protest from an organization that called itself One Million Moms but really had only about 40,000 followers. Read our coverage of this news in Lessons on Values From Ellen & JCPenney.

In this case, Popchips gets some credit. While CEO Keith Belling was part of the team that came up with the ad, he has personally apologized for it and seems to get the point.

On Popchips’ “what’s poppin’” blog, Belling issued this apology: “We received a lot of feedback about the dating campaign parody we launched today and appreciate everyone who took the time to share their point of view. Our team worked hard to create a light-hearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. We did not intend to offend anyone. I take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.”